My
guests today are Carol and Arnie Kanter. Welcome to OpEdNews. Recently, you
published a beautiful book called No Secret Where Elephants Walk . Can you tell our readers a little about
how the book came into being?

Copyright 2011, Arnie Kanter

Arnie: Carol and I were fortunate to be able to
take three trips to Africa over a period of about six years. On each trip, Carol took notes for
poems and I took photographs.
After the trips, we worked independently on our poems and
photographs. A good friend,
Marilyn Susman, who was familiar with both Carol's poetry and my photography
suggested that we put them together in a book, and that idea became No
Secret Where Elephants Walk.

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Carol:
Arnie's response gives the impression that I took lots of notes on these
trips. In fact, I started out on
our first trip intending to do so. That lasted not quite one day. I quickly saw that I would be
spending way too much time looking down at my notepad and would virtually miss
much of the experience the trip offered.
I did take video and occasionally I would scratch down a note or two,
especially at the end of the day, figuring that I might write a poem or two
once we returned home. I was
shocked to find that when I later sat down at my computer, first drafts of poems
seemed to pour out.

When we decided
to try to put a book together, it was something of a surprise how well we could
match up the poems and the photos, even if we each had different
"takes" on what we saw.
Of course, maybe we shouldn't have been so surprised: We were, after all, on the same trip.

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Carol and
friend Copyright 2011, Arnie Kanter

I
love the image of you sitting at the computer, Carol, and the words and images
just flowing onto the screen. Have you always written your poetry on the
computer or did you originally start out with those yellow legal pads? I found
it incredibly difficult to abandon my low-tech way of writing; in fact, I
wasn't convinced that anything would "happen" without pen and paper.
Was it hard for you to make that transition?

Carol: Well, I
didn't begin writing poetry until around 1995. And though most folks were probably already hip-deep into
the computer age, not me. So, yes,
I started with pen and paper--and (don't tell anyone) sometimes still do. For a brief while, I couldn't imagine
giving up that tactile part of composing. But re-re-re-revising is such a drag,
longhand. So, mostly I've made the
iffy transition.

Let's
talk about the book some more, if you don't mind. Both of you were used to
operating solo, correct? So, was there some initial trepidation about trying to
put your individual efforts together? Were either of you worried about giving
over ownership or other issues?

Carol: Great question. Correct that we were
used to operating solo. And we
contemplated that the project could go one of two ways: Either it could be good fun. Or it
could lead to the end of a 45-year-old marriage. I think the relationship was preserved because it was VERY
clear who had ownership of which part.
Of course, when it came time to write the intro to the book, that took
us about 106 drafts.

Arnie: Carol's answer suggests that neither of
us had input into the other's work.
That's not right. I
commented on Carol's poems and she on my photos. Changes were made by both of us based on those comments,
though it is true that the ultimate decision on poetry was always Carol's and
on photography, mine. I think the
intro only took 104 drafts, but I could be wrong.

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Well, now that we've straightened that out, where did the idea of Africa
come from? Did you know that one trip would lead to another? How did you decide
where to go and with whom?

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of (more...)